Back Maria Segarra wins an award for the best scientific paper by the Spanish National Chapter of the European Society of Biomechanics

Maria Segarra wins an award for the best scientific paper by the Spanish National Chapter of the European Society of Biomechanics

The doctoral student with the UPF Department of Information and Communication Technologies was recognized at the meeting of the Spanish National Chapter of the European Society of Biomechanics, held on 25 and 26 October in Granada.

08.11.2021

Imatge inicial

Maria Segarra, a doctoral student with the UPF Department of Information and Communication Technologies (DTIC), has been awarded one of the two prizes for the best scientific paper granted by the Spanish National Chapter of the European Society of Biomechanics (CAPESB). The recognition took place during the annual meeting held on 25 and 26 October in Granada.

The award was granted for the presentation she gave, entitled “A computational approach to chondrocyte mechanotransduction”. Maria Segarra presented the research she is conducting for her doctoral thesis, associated with the area of Biomechanics and Mechanobiology at the BCN MedTech research unit, led by the researchers Jérôme Noailly and Gemma Piella.

The research recognized

Cells are able to respond to different kinds of signals. Specifically, the processes whereby cells integrate mechanical stimuli is known as mechanotransduction. These processes regulate important cellular aspects, such as in the development or in possible conservative treatments of osteoarthritis of the knee. This condition is common among women over 65 years of age, and currently the available treatments are mainly palliative, to alleviate the pain derived in part from the inflammation suffered by the joint involved.

“It is not an easy task to relate how mechanical stimuli are integrated with inflammation of the joint at cellular level”, Maria Segarra assures. For this reason, “we resort to the development of a network-based computational model, which generates hypotheses about how a specific cell of the knee cartilage (chondrocyte) would behave under different mechanical conditions”, she adds. The model serves to relate various mechanical stimuli with the differentiated expression of inflammatory factors and “would enable establishing qualitative descriptions of whether the stimulus in question is beneficial or harmful to the chondrocyte and, by extension, its contribution to the onset of the disease”, the researcher concludes.

More broadly, this research is part of a collaboration between BCN MedTech, the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM), and the Hospital del Mar Rheumatology Department. The results will be key to better define the evolution of cartilage cells affected by osteoarthritis in complex biochemical and mechanical environments that control the progression of the disease and, at the same time, depend on the particularities of each patient.

Multimedia

Categories:

SDG - Sustainable Development Goals:

Els ODS a la UPF

Contact

For more information

News published by:

Communication Office